University of Virginia Library

Forgotten Laughter, Forgotten Prayer

By W.H. Auden

If you are thinking about
making the world a better place for
the future, what kind of knowledge
of the past will you need? This can
vary. I think that at this particular
point in history, the things we have
to study - and here we need the
help of historians - are the various
European revolutions, starting, let
us say, with the Papal Revolution,
then coming on to the
Reformation, the English
Revolution, the American
Revolution, the French Revolution,
the Russian Revolution. Those
things have to be studied; we can
learn from them. The rejection of
the past, I think, is all nonsense.

I must say I agree very much,
about tradition and the past, with a
remark by Chesterton, when he
says, "Tradition means giving votes
to that obscurest of classes, our
ancestors. It is the democracy of
the dead. Tradition refuses to
surrender to the arrogant oligarchy
of those who merely happen to be
walking around."

* * * * * *

I think that a lot of people have
forgotten two of the three worlds I
think essential for life. A number
have forgotten how to laugh and
by that I don't mean the Voltarian
smile of reason, I mean belly
laughter, which I shall talk about in
a moment as the spirit of carnival -
and how to pray.

If I talk about prayer, I think
the petitionary side of it is purely a
preliminary, superficial thing,
because it is quite involuntary.
Naturally, we are always asking:
Can I marry the girl I love? Can I
sell my house? Or whatever. But a
prayer really begins at the point at
which one listens to a voice.

I am not going to argue with
people about this; I would call it
the voice of the Holy Spirit, you
could call it the inner light. The
only things you cannot call it, you
cannot call it reason, and you
cannot call it the superego, because
the superego could never say
anything new.

* * * * * *

In the world of prayer we are all
equal in the sense that each of us is
a unique person, with a unique
perspective on the world, a member
of a class of one. The myth of our
common descent from a single
ancestor, Adam, is a way of saying
that as persons we are called into
being, not by the biological process,
but by our parents, our siblings, our
friends, our enemies and so on. This
is where one listens to be told what
one is to do next; and there is
always something new.

On the other side is what I
would call - connected with
laughter as I think of it - the spirit
of carnival, as exemplified in the
Saturnalia, in medieval carnival, and
the Roman carnival brilliantly
described by Goethe in February of
1776. In the world of the vita
activa there is no question of
equality in the case of prayer. In
the case of carnival, there is
complete equality.

Essentially, what is carnival
about? Here the great writers about
it are Rabelais and Dickens. It is a
common celebration of our
common fate as members of our
species. Here we are, mortal, born
into the world, we must die, and
this applies to everybody, so that
there is a mixture. This is what
laughter also implies, because
laughter is both an act of protest
and an act of acceptance.

There is a joy in the fact that we
are all in the same boat, that there
are no exception made. On the
other hand, we cannot help wishing
that we had no problems - let us
say, that either we were in a way
unthinking like the animals or
that we were disembodied angels.
But this is impossible; so we laugh
because we simultaneously protest
and accept.

It seems to me, for example,
that the hippies are trying - and
quite rightly because this tends to
disappear in a technological
civilization - to revive the spirit of
carnival. Unfortunately, it will fall,
I think, insofar as they reject the
active work of life in between.

Trying to think about what
changes have come about through
astronomy and physics in our
position in the physical universe, I
look at it this way. It is true - and
from a Christian point of view this
seems to me essential - that it is
absolutely right that the physical
universe should exist etsi Deus non
daretur (as if God did not exist). It
has to be purged of all kinds of
polytheism, which is then
expecting, on the earth, God to do
for us what we are supposed to do
for him. Just as Adam was put in
the Garden of Eden to dress it, we
are here to look after the universe.
By that I think that one has to help
the universe realize goals which it
cannot realize itself.

Seymour Leichman

W. H. Auden

If I want to use an analogy, I say
that in regard to the inorganic
universe, I see our relation rather
like that of a sculptor. No sculptor
whom I have ever spoken to thinks
of enforcing his forms on nature.
He thinks: "I lay bare, I realize in a
stone, a form that is latently there."

I think we might have a decent
world if it were universally
recognized that to make a hideous
lampshade, for example, is to
torture helpless metals. And that
every time we make a nuclear
weapon, we corrupt the morals of a
host of neutrons below the age of
consent.

W. H. Auden, the poet,
playwright and essayist, conducted
a seminar at Columbia, and these
lines are excerpted from his
remarks. They appeared earlier in
The Columbia Forum.